Dear nerds.

[tyggerjai]

I have an iPhone. I think 2g, 16g. It has the latest firmware, but no sim card (Don't ask. This is China, alright?). So I can't apparently use it for anything - even with an unsupported sim card it doesn't seem to ... do anything.

Now. I don't, actually, want to make phone calls with it. I want mostly to use it as a handy portable wifi device. Does anyone know if that's possible, with an unsupported sim? And, y'know, how to do it? The interwebs tends to assume that you have a supported sim and can work from there, it seems.

Comments

[drwally.livejournal.com]

I can only speak from my experience with the touch - the setup may be quite different. But it should be able to access any unsecured wifi easily, and allow you to enter a usr/pswd on any secured. Once it's in there, it will jump wireless points ad nauseam. There may be a setting on the iphone to tell it to 'prefer' wireless over 3G when available. Easiest way to check for wireless is to use maps or youtube apps, I guess it will try to look for them.

However yeah - there may be some proprietary unlocking required, a bonding with a phone service provider before any of that is even enabled.

Maybe jailbreaking is the way to go...

[drwally.livejournal.com]

I was interested in your question and I found that yeah, you would need to jailbreak it as it requires SIM activation. You might be able to jig it with an inactive SIM or the like.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=321344

The final post is the one.

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Wait. The iPod touch does wifi?

[neefsck.livejournal.com]

Yes.
Quite well too.

[drwally.livejournal.com]

Yeah it's great it's like everything the phone has minus the phone plus 32 gb.

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Ah. But it doesn't send Cyrillic SMS....

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

Neither will any phone without a SIM card.

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Very true!

[drziplok.livejournal.com]

If you paid full price for it it should be unlocked, so any GSM SIM for any carrier will let it activate.

If you didn't, then you (or someone else) owes a carrier money for it, and until that money's paid off, it will remain locked to that carrier's network. Once the contract's paid for, the carrier should be willing to unlock it. It should only need to be on the carrier network for a short time (less than an hour) to activate, after which it shouldn't care too much that it's missing a SIM.

If you bought it out of the back of a truck/bicycle/cafe, then you got ripped off. If that's the case, it's either stolen or defective, and you have a very high-tech paperweight.

(disclaimer: I don't speak for )

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine bought it, I think on a plan, and then we threw him in a swimming pool. With the phone. He decided it was a writeoff, bought a new one (into which he inserted his sim), and gave me the old one. I dried it out, changed the battery, et voila.

So the payment status is ... undetermined.

Eh. I might just go get a plan with 3. It's not going to kill me.